Arkham City: Harley Quinns Revenge

Splinter Cell: Blacklist reminds me that it is OK to kill people

I always find it amazing when a video game makes you start questioning your own morals in life. Let me explain, there is a game franchise which has been out for a while now called Splinter Cell. I always dismissed Splinter Cell as a Metal Gear Solid rip off, I guess it was because they are both espionage games and I played Metal Gear first, whatever, I was a stupid kid. I happened to pick up Splinter Cell: Conviction last Christmas during the steam Christmas sale, we have all been there, I have 77 games on my steam account, 46 have been played and I would hazard a guess that 10 have been played to completion. I'm getting off topic here, Splinter Cell: Conviction, I recently had a weekend spare with no plans and not much money, so I decided to give the game a whirl and was pleasantly surprised. I would go as far to say Splinter Cell: Conviction is one of the better games I have played in a long time (I can only vouch for the single player). I guess you can call me a fan because I am now really looking forward to future Splinter Cell games.

Imagine my delight when I discovered that a new Splinter Cell game is coming out, Splinter Cell: Blacklist! This time Sam is the man in charge and he only answers to the president. I am genuinely excited about this game, it looks fantastic. Ubisoft Toronto seems to be doing a fantastic job, adding loads of new features to the game play and even adding new AI types! Here check out this video to see what i am talking about.

Wow, look at all those new features. Shiny, I know. The game looks amazing and i really can't wait to get my hands on a copy.

Now lets get to the questioning of morals I mentioned up at the very top of this post. Throughout the demo video you see Mr Fisher killing a vast amount of men in a variety of ways, he uses knifes , he uses guns, He uses some kind of electric shock device and hell, he even uses a UAV air strike just to make sure everyone is good and dead! Only once during the killing spree did I feel bad for the death of a living creature, if you watched the video then you can probably guess what i am going to say next, That's right, the new AI type, attack dogs. The only death in the entire video which bothered me was the dogs death. I know the dog was trained to attack you so you didn't really have a choice but that's the point, the dog was trained to do it, he didn't know if what he was doing was right or wrong. He was just doing what he was trained to do.

I know a real dog wasn't hurt or killed, it is all just pixels and code but that's not the point, the point is I valued the life of the dog more than I valued the life's of the humans. Surely I should value all life equally or at least show some loyalty to my own species. Then I remembered that this happened...

Oh Humanity, why you so stooopid?

It's been a while...

On the internet, there are thousands upon thousands of people who think that what they have got to say is interesting, I am one of those people! If you already know me... Hi, remember that awesome time we had together in that place? yeah, me too, good memories. If how ever you are randomly finding this blog and you thought you would give it a read, than welcome, this hopefully will become a place where I shall be posting my opinions on stuff and things that matter to me, oh and I will be probably be posting some of my photoshop work (if you would like to see some of it, look at the background to this page, sexy, I know).

I have tried this blogging lark in the past and failed. I think the failure was a mixture of being in a depressed state,  not really having anything in particular to blog about and feeling like I needed my opinions to be validated by my facebook friends. Well this time round I am not as depressed (in fact if anyone cares, I've been surprising happy recently, go figure), I still don't really have anything to blog about and I still feel like I need peoples approval, but this time round, I'm going to try and not give a fuck...

...blog blogging, blog, blog!

So, what's new with me? well, since I last blogged, I moved to Germany, got really homesick/depressed, moved back to good old Blighty, no longer homesick, remained depressed... hang on, mosquito are in my room, i need to go kill them all *JAMES USED FLIP FLOP SMASH* ... right, yeah still depressed, sat around for 9 months, got offered a temp job Game testing, moved to derby for the job and here I am now, less depressed.

*side note* Seriously, I am really paranoid about the bugs in my room. I killed most of them, at least the ones I could see.

Holy shit Platypi in hats.

So what is the plan for the future? well, College to study graphic design would be nice and it's definitely a step I am willing to take, even if it means I will be going back to education for 2-3 years. What I really want to do though is get a full time job in the games industry again, working at Eurocom has rekindled my love of being a games tester. so yeah, if i could have my way, full time permanent games tester, get my own flat and some puppies (since having pet a platypus isn't strictly legal). I've been thinking a lot about how cool it would be to have kids as well but I'm not sure if that's just down to my Dad issues and wanting to prove a point (that is a subject for another blog).

ohyeah, i forgot to mention I am helping organise a little music festival back in Waterloo, its going to be a highly fun and stressful ordeal but I am looking forward to it, and more than the event, the two hour period after it were me and the other organisers sit down, relax and have a well deserved beer (first round is on me).

if you made it this far, thanks for reading.

Ciao!